Mocha Muffins

Glad the Sunday is here. Yet another weekend and I am glad I got to bake these muffins. We spent our Saturday watching the romantic comedy flick Cocktail at Fame Cinemas yesterday, indeed worth the watch, and will tempt you to redo your wardrobe!

I'm hit with mid-week crisis on Wednesdays, generally. This week's been too hectic with a good amount of workload, deliverables carrying on my shoulder, some of which have been carried over the weekend too. I have been bogged down by the tight timelines of the deal I am currently working on. Weekend seemed far with two more days to go and I had felt I had worked long enough through Monday and Tuesday. Can we have a mid-week holiday too??? Wink-wink! Sigh.

It’s imperative I need bounty energy to knock this pressure off, punch it down and bounce back in action to sustain through the week. And what can do better than these mocha muffins, flavoured with coffee and chocolate, sweet crisp topping from damerara, a powerhouse of energy that I can take to work which will be a real saver, an energy booster I will rely on for my tea breaks, which I have been avoiding to race against my submissions. For a chocolate lover I have in myself, I know well it can only do good to my senses and that coffee adds in the kick factor. And not just for me, but also for the man I live with, who adores chocolates intensely, these muffins have been an instant hit with my family and friends.

Mocha Muffins

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp. sunflower oil
225 gm. plain flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
115 gm. salted butter, melted
150 gm. damerara sugar
1 large egg, beaten
125 ml milk
1 tsp. almond / vanilla extract
2 tbsp. strong coffee
1 tbsp. instant coffee powder
55 gm. plain chocolate chips
25 gm. raisins

Cocoa Topping

3 tbsp. damerara sugar
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tsp. all spice powder

DIRECTIONS

Oil a 12 cup muffin pan with sunflower oil or line them with muffin paper cases. Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a large mixing bowl.

In a separate mixing bowl, add the melted butter and damerara sugar together, then stir in the beaten egg. Pour in the milk, almond / vanilla extract, coffee, the coffee powder.

Add this wet blend into the dry ingredients and gently mix them together. Then add in chocolate chips, the raisins to the flour mixture, stir together till just combined. Do not over stir - a little lumpy batter is just fine.

Divide the muffin batter into the paper cases till 2/3rd full. To make the toppings, place the damerara sugar in a bowl, add cocoa powder and all spices powder and mix well. Sprinkle the topping over the muffins, then transfer to a pre-heated oven and bake at 190 deg C for 25-30 mins, till risen and golden brown.

The recipe may seem quite a lot, it does fetch 12 large muffins which is quite a lot for our family. So I halved the recipe to get 6 large muffins. However what I have mentioned here is the original recipe for 12 muffins. Reduce it to half if you need to bake fewer muffins, But then these are delicious. They have chocolate, coffee and all things good, so you may want bake all of it and yet not feel guilt about devouring them. They do well as tea time accompaniments or even take away picnic treats.